Sailing to Christiansted St Croix USVIs

Clearly I am well behind in keeping the blog up to date; we have been keeping ourselves far too busy having lots of fun in the Caribbean! However, we are also now in an area with good internet connections and so I will endeavour to write and post the backlog of entries. That will take some time and so to keep you up to date on where we are, I’ll be working on posting one current and one backlog entry at a time. So, if you look back at mid-March you will see entries for Dominica which are new. Clearly, there are lots more to come.

Leaving Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas, US Virgin Islands

After our longer than expected experience of checking into the US Virgin Islands on Saturday 21 April, we spent the night at anchor off Water Island near Charlotte Amalie on St Thomas. The following morning we set off early (at 0625hrs!) to head south to St Croix.

Sailing from Charlotte Amalie to St Croix was not ideal as it would potentially put us hard on the wind to get to our preferred port of arrival, hence our initial attempt to check into the United States at Red Hook Bay on St Thomas. However, we were incredibly lucky with the wind on Sunday because, unusually for this time of year, it came from the east-northeast. That meant that we were able to head directly towards Christiansted, and not be hard on the wind, making good speed all the way. Indeed, we averaged over 7 knots for the whole 43-mile passage, including the time taken to raise and lower the anchor. A potentially troublesome passage turned into a blast!

Approaching Christiansted, St Croix

As a result, the extra time we’d factored in to beat up to Christiansted was not needed and we arrived off the entrance at midday. Christiansted sits behind a coral reef and so there are some abrupt turns in the entrance channel and, quite close to us, surf breaking over the coral heads. It was definitely a case of check and double check the navigation to make sure that we stayed in the safe water during our approach [Ed:  though, fortunately, arriving in the middle of the day with good light, we were able to see the reefs and shallow patches as colour changes in the sea.]

The historic centre of Christiansted

Christiansted waterfront

There is a rather exposed anchorage just to the east of the town but we wanted to be somewhere more protected from the prevailing winds, with the added bonus of being closer to the historic centre. That meant creeping our way into a mooring field behind Protestant Cay and seeing if we could find a suitable spot to drop our anchor. Whether or not we were successful in finding a suitable space in which to anchor, it was still a worthwhile exercise because we got a close up look at the old historic (Danish) buildings and the lively waterfront with its bars and restaurants.

Protestant Cay beach

As we worked our way in, to our right was Protestant Cay. Initially, it didn’t seem attractive as all we could see was the hotel but on the western side of the cay, next to where we wanted to anchor, it was all palm trees and golden sand beach.

There was even the distraction of seaplanes taking off and landing. They provide a passenger service between the various US Virgin Islands and add to the interest of what seemed like a good place to stop and anchor.

The views from BV at anchor off Christiansted

Looking at how all of the other various vessels were sitting we decided that there was enough room for us to anchor in the lee of Protestant Cay. It took us 2 goes to get it right because, having settled down first time, we found that there was a current which pushed us around a bit and we ended up a little too close to a moored yacht. However, the second time round worked, and we were perfectly positioned to explore and enjoy Christiansted as well as investigating diving centres. The diving on the reefs is said to be very good here and so one of our main objectives was to dive on part of the 1000-foot deep wall on the front of the island’s north reef just to the northwest of Christiansted. We’d also found that we needed to look at getting a US sim card for phone calls because, for the first time in our travels, our UK mobile phones were not getting a roaming signal. It looked as if we might have to stay a few days – well, there are worse places to spend time!

Christiansted, St Croix, USVIs